Step 2: Velcro arduino and FSRs to hat

Step 3: Conclusion

And that's it. You will have hours of fun playing pong against yourself, using your eyebrows. Remember that the the "S" key allows you to start the ga...

While its not exactly the OCZ NIA. The Pong-hat-duino is way to play pong using only the power of your mind. Well, your eyebrows anyway...

This is basically a modification of Tom Igoe's Monski Pong project from the excellent book Making Things Talk (O'Reilly). When I bought this book from the maker shed, it came with an arduino and a protoshield (both of which you can see at attached by velcro to the top of the ball hat as well as two force sensitive resistors. Unfortunately, the Monski pong in chapter two of MTT uses 2 flex sensor resistors to be embedded in the cuddly monkey (he is the Monski on the book's cover). So, I modified the circuit to use the FSRs instead, these are attached with velcro tape to the inside of the hat's band. The whole thing makes for a challenge as you play pong against yourself using your eyebrows.

Step 1: Modify Monski Circuit

Make the basic Monski pong circuit from chapter two of Making Things Talk. See the Making Things Talk site for full details on this, or buy the book! Use Force Sensitive Resistors instead of Flex sensors. Check it works initially directly on the protoshield using the code that comes with the book or the processing code (the pde file) attached to this step.

Step 2: Velcro arduino and FSRs to hat

Once satisfied that the circuit works, get some velcro sticky tape. This is the stuff that has the fluffy and "hard" velcro parts on separate sticky tabs. Very useful stuff. I put two tabs under the arduino to stick it to the top of the hat and, after threading through the 30 gauge wire through the hats air holes, I velcroed each FSR to the inside of the hat band.